You Don't Know Me Read online

  God understood the kind of mother my father needed, and He gave him that mother for fifteen years. God also understood that it would take another special woman to love a man who was so wounded. That woman was my mother. If my dad had not met my mother, there might never have been a Ray Charles.

  MY MOTHER, Della Beatrice Antwine, was born two years before my father, a fact she still hates to admit. Her family lived in Richmond, Texas, a town fifteen miles southwest of Houston that boasted fewer than 1,500 people when my mother was born. Richmond was cotton and oil country, and it wasn’t hit as hard as most of the country during the Depression. Visitors from those days described the town as a surviving piece of the old South, with residential streets still lined with fine white plantation-style houses with large verandas. Richmond had been a refuge for emancipated slaves after the Civil War, but by the time my mother was born, the train tracks running through the middle of town was a racial divide as absolute as a razor-wire-topped wall.

  The colored section of town, as it was called then, was about three blocks long. It consisted mainly of barbecue places and beer joints where people could dance on a Saturday night. Our family owned about eighty acres of land, divided among the various households. My mother lived in a one-bedroom frame house on ten acres of farm land with her grandmother Mama Lee and her uncle George. They raised cotton, corn, peanuts, and potatoes, and kept a truck garden for vegetables, which they canned. There were many fruit trees and wild blackberries and dewberries to pick, and the fruit and berries were made into cobblers and pies. There were horses to pull the wagons and cows for milk. And with hogs and chickens, ducks and geese, there was no need to buy meat. There were snakes, too, and they scared me to death when we went to visit Mama Lee and Uncle George years later. There was little money for extras, but there was always plenty to eat. My mother could eat as much as she wanted and never left anything on her plate. If she wanted ten biscuits, she could have them, but she could only take one at a time. It was ingrained in her that nothing was ever wasted. Everyone worked the land, and during planting and harvest time, the children stayed home from school to help out. If a family finished their harvest first, they helped the neighbors with theirs.

  If things got rough, the younger women sometimes moved to the city looking for work. When my mother was young, her mother and two aunts moved to Houston and took jobs as live-in housekeepers. Every two weeks they would come home to Richmond and bring Mama Lee money and clothes for my mother and cousins. Families stuck together, and they shared. Everyone was expected to do their part.

  Children went to school when they weren’t needed at home, but school wasn’t a priority for country children in those days. The colored school was a two-room building. The younger children went from primer (kindergarten) to the sixth grade in one room. The older children went from the seventh to the twelfth grade in the other. The school was eight miles from the colored section of Richmond, which meant the children had to walk sixteen miles each day. They were expected to study hard when they were there, but the teachers were lenient about tardiness and absences, especially during harvest time. Not all children were able to finish school, though many did. My mother attended school there until the fourth grade, when she moved to Houston.

  My mother’s family was very religious. They had built a small church called Zion Watchtower on the family property. The congregation’s faithful were made up almost entirely of relatives. There was praying and Bible reading at home as well. As a child, I was fascinated by the fact that Mama Lee and Uncle George had never learned to read, yet they could read the Bible. I still don’t know how they did that. I guess they must have memorized the passages from “lining” them at church. (Lining is a Southern custom where the preacher or church leader reads a line of song or Scripture and the congregation repeats it. It originated as a way to get by in a church where there was no money for books, and most of the worshippers couldn’t read.) Mama Lee sang hymns around the house, and she rocked my mother to sleep singing the old Negro spirituals. When my brothers and I went to visit her in later years, she would do the same for us. I no longer remember the names of the songs, but I can still feel her arms around me and hear the sound of her voice and the rocker on the wooden floor.

  Not everybody waited to marry before having sex, but if a girl got pregnant, the couple was expected to marry, at gunpoint if necessary. The young couple was not left to survive on their own, though. They would live with the family and help out with whatever was needed. My mother’s parents had not married. She never knew why, for it was never spoken of in her presence. Years later my grandfather did marry, but it was to another woman. It bothered my mother that she didn’t have a father like other children. She knew who he was, and she carried his name, but he never came around when she was small. He lived in Houston.

  When my mother was ten years old, she left Richmond and Mama Lee and went to live with her mother in Houston. The move to Houston was a struggle. Before long, she dropped out of school.

  She fought with my grandmother from the beginning. Accustomed to a quieter life with Mama Lee, she disapproved of her mother’s late nights and partying after work. Things got worse when she dropped out of school. Now my mother’s new responsibility was her new baby brother, James. She was expected to babysit while her mother went out, and like all teenagers, she resented it. James would cry until my grandmother got home; my mother would become angry and frustrated. She started talking back to her mother, something that simply was not tolerated in their home. One day my mother announced that she was moving out on her own. By the next day she already regretted her announcement, but she had too much pride to back down. She moved in with the only person she could think of, her cousin Robert Lee. She cried every night for weeks, but she was determined to make it on her own. To this day she says leaving home so young was one of the worst mistakes of her life.

  When I asked my mother how she survived, she answered with one word: “Lying.” In those days nobody asked for a birth certificate, and my mother was so tall that she could pass for eighteen. So she got a Social Security card and a health card and went to work waiting tables. Soon she found a second job as well—singing with a gospel group. She saw singing as a way to do something she enjoyed, serve God, and make a little extra money at the same time. My mother moved in with Ella Dooley, one of the older women in her group, staying in the bedroom Mrs. Dooley’s daughter had vacated when she got married. The group wore matching dresses and sang at different churches. They were paid with part of the offering. My mother’s world of gospel was an innocent one in those days. There was always an older person to chaperone the young girls, and they worshipped along with the congregations they entertained. None of them smoked, drank, or used drugs, and they maintained a good reputation where men were concerned.

  My mother was sixteen when Cecil Shaw came into her life. He heard the gospel group she sang with and immediately recognized their talent. He began to rehearse the girls and prepare them for a professional career. They purchased choir robes and began singing on the radio and in concerts. Once they were under contract, they moved on to concert halls and bigger churches. Soon there was a recording contract and a series of 78s. Some of the records survived to become CDs and are still available. My mother’s face appears on the covers, smiling into the camera, looking beautiful and so young. By the time she was out of her teens, my mother was on her way to a successful gospel career.

  The worlds of gospel and secular music didn’t have that much in common in those days, but though they might not share a stage, gospel and R & B singers shared a common struggle to succeed. My father was in the early stages of his own career at that time, touring the Jim Crow circuit and barely eking out a living with his music. Listening to the radio helped keep him going on the road. Traveling through Texas one day, he happened to hear the Cecil Shaw singers on the radio. The song was “Pray On, My Child,” and the lead was sung by the clearest, most beautiful female tenor he had ever heard. He was deeply m
oved. He had to meet the woman behind that remarkable voice. That woman, of course, was my mother.

  CHAPTER 2

  I Got a Woman

  I got a woman way over

  town,

  She’s good to me.

  —RAY CHARLES

  I DO NOT BELIEVE IT’S A COINCIDENCE THAT MY PARENTS met the year my father lost his “second mother,” Mary Jane. Though he never again lived in Greenville, my dad visited Mary Jane and Mr. Pit over the years and kept in touch with them as best he could. When Mary Jane became ill in 1953, my father helped with the doctor bills. He knew she was very sick, but he was still unprepared for her death. The news came in the middle of a recording session. My dad had recently signed with Atlantic Records, but with a hit still eluding him, each session was important. When the phone rang in the recording booth in the middle of a song called “Losing Hand,” it was someone calling from Greenville to tell him that Mary Jane had passed. My father received the news impassively, silently, as he did all the deepest shocks of his life. And as always, once the pain hit, he immediately escaped into his music. After a moment’s silence, he told the others he wanted to keep going. That session became a professional turning point for my father. All the emotion he was suppressing was poured into the music. “Mess Around,” his first major hit, came out of that session. When it was over, he went home to Greenville to bury Mary Jane in the tiny church he had attended as a boy. Then he went back on the road and continued as if nothing had happened. But the aching grief he carried with him took him to a new level of loneliness. For the first time, there was no woman in his life who really loved him. Not with the kind of love that abides.

  Neither of my parents had had a successful relationship when they met. Both were in their mid-twenties. Both had been married and divorced, and though my father had no difficulty finding a woman, he had never found the one. Between them, they had more than their share of emotional baggage.

  Some of my father’s affairs were as famous as his name. The serious side of his romantic life is less well known. When he was eighteen, he fell in love for the first time with a girl named Louise. The result of that relationship was my half sister Evelyn. Louise’s parents objected strongly to their daughter’s relationship with an unknown musician, however, and convinced their daughter to come home. My father was heartbroken, and though he supported Evelyn financially while she was growing up, his relationship with Louise came to a painful end. Two years later, tired of meaningless relationships with women on the road, he met and hastily married a woman named Eileen. They hardly knew each other and, inevitably, the marriage ended as quickly as it began. My father was traveling constantly and barely had two dollars to rub together, so meeting a woman he could build a life with was no easy task.

  My mother’s romantic history was equally dismal. In the early fifties, it was considered unnatural and even scandalous for a woman to remain unmarried past her teens. By the time my mother was twenty, she longed for a home of her own and children. So when she was introduced to a tall, handsome minister’s son after a church service one night, she thought she had found the man of her dreams. He certainly looked the part: six feet four, with skin like ebony and thick, curly black hair. The minute things got passionate between them, she did what good girls did in those days: she married him and moved to a house in the country. For a few weeks she was content with a life that consisted of keeping house, going to church, and singing at concerts with her group. Unfortunately, her newfound happiness lasted for what she refers to as a hot five minutes. This good Christian man began to abuse her physically whenever he was unhappy with her. As the man of the house, he expected her to put up with it. Now my mother will put up with a great deal from a man if she feels it’s her duty, but she draws the line at physical abuse. Fighting with words is one thing, she will tell you. Fighting with fists is simply unnecessary. No woman should have to put up with being struck. So she divorced him and went home to Houston. Looking back, she recognizes that she really didn’t love him the way she should have anyway. She still wanted a home and family, but it would have to be with a man who treated her with respect.

  I believe it was inevitable that music first brought my parents together. The most intimate relationships of my father’s life, personal or professional, revolved around the music. My dad’s professional prospects were just beginning to look up when he stopped in Houston to do a radio commercial advertising his next concert. In those days every up-and-coming musician relied on live radio spots to bring in audiences. In the course of chatting on the air, the disc jockey said, “I understand you’re really into gospel.”

  My father replied, “Yes. I love gospel.”

  The DJ asked, “Who’s your favorite group?”

  My father called out my mother’s group, the Cecil Shaw Singers. Then he started talking about how much he loved the song “Pray On, My Child” and mentioned that he had bought all the group’s records.

  My father had no way of knowing that this was a difficult time for the Cecil Shaw Singers. They had been very successful on the gospel circuit, where churches became accustomed to paying them out of the Sunday offering. But when Cecil Shaw got them a record contract, everything began to change. Being under contract to a recording company meant they could no longer sing for their supper at local churches. They had to charge a fee, and some of their fans resented it. People expected them to carry on like they always had. The criticism and cold shoulders were hard on my mother, so when she heard my father compliment them on the radio, she said to herself, “Well, somebody likes us.”

  She decided to call the radio station and asked the man who answered to thank my father for his kind words. The man told her she could speak to him herself, and they put him on the phone. She shyly introduced herself, and something about her voice captured his attention. She thanked him for mentioning them on the air and said if he wanted to meet Cecil Shaw while he was in town, she felt certain Cecil would welcome a call.

  My father responded, “Well, I know how to get in touch with Cecil Shaw. I’ll give him a call.” He called Cecil as soon as he got off the phone with my mother.

  My father was staying at the Crystal White Hotel in Houston. It was a popular stop for black musicians at a time when Texas hotels were still segregated. The Crystal White was something of a one-stop service: the man who owned the hotel also owned the taxi stand and the restaurant. That night when Cecil met my father at the hotel restaurant for dinner, my dad started asking questions about my mother. Cecil told him that my mother was the one who sang tenor on “Pray On, My Child.” My father said, “That’s the prettiest, clearest tenor I’ve ever heard in my life. I’d like to meet that sweet thing. Would you have her come on over?”

  Cecil started laughing and said, “Man, she’s not comin’ over here!” He explained that Della Antwine wasn’t the sort of woman who met strange men at hotels. She was a good Christian woman who didn’t smoke, drink, use drugs, or meet men at hotels. She was accustomed to meeting eligible men at church. But my father really wanted to meet her, so after thinking about it a minute, Cecil said, “Well, here’s what I’ll do. If you want to meet here, I’ll bring her. She’ll come with me.” Cecil liked my father, and he didn’t see any harm in their meeting. My mother still laughs when she tells the story. She says that it wasn’t until much later that Cecil confessed to his part in the plot to get my parents together.

  Listening to my mother talk about meeting my father is downright funny. She was not impressed. My father had been through many struggles in his life, but getting women was not one of them. Girls had been falling for him since he was twelve years old. My father’s charm usually attracted women powerfully, but it was completely lost on my mother. To begin with, he was too short. At five foot nine, he and my mother were the same height, which meant she towered over him when she put on high heels. And she loved high heels. Besides being short, he had medium brown skin, and my mother liked her men dark—tall, dark, and handsome, with thick, curly blac
k hair. None of this description fit my father. As for his singing, he was still imitating Nat “King” Cole and Charles Brown. She didn’t think there was anything special about his style. Worse, he traveled in the world of secular music where people smoked, drank, took drugs, and slept around. My mother did none of those things. And to top it all, he was blind. He would never be able to keep up with her. She liked my father. He seemed nice enough, but he was not at all her type. When she left the hotel that first evening, she never expected to see him again.

  So naturally she was baffled when she kept running into him on the road. Both of them were traveling with their groups, and it seemed like every time she turned around, he was there. It was only much later that she found out the frequent meetings were not a coincidence. My father had made a secret agreement with Cecil to keep tabs on my mother, so he always knew what city she was going to next. Cecil would go to the radio station to meet my father, who would be there advertising his current concert. Then Cecil would bring my father back to the hotel where the group was staying, and of course, my mother would be there. Cecil and my father would start talking music, and soon they would be singing and working on arrangements together. My mother came to dread these sessions because the two of them would be up singing gospel all night, and Cecil made the girls sing backup for them. At first it was a joy, but after a day on the road and a concert, my mother was exhausted and desperate for sleep. She and the other women would beg them to stop so they could go to bed. When Cecil told my father it was time to go home because the girls were too tired, my father would always say, “Hold on just one minute—just one—let’s just get this note right here.” And they would be at it again. It never occurred to my mother that my dad was keeping them up on purpose so he could have more time with her.